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Monday, May 20, 2013

Picked Up Pablum

Shank could have used some positive, hometown themes with his most recent column; he had the opportunity to write about the Red Sox and their recent five game winning streak, or he could have chosen to get near his quota of yearly Bruins games by writing about yesterday's 5-2 thumping of the New York Rangers.

Instead, he used the guise of yet another underwhelming picked up pieces column in an attempt to justify his May 11th column all but accusing David Ortiz of using performance enhancing drugs:

Facts, not opinions: According to Major League Baseball, there have been 636 professional players suspended for violating MLB’s drug policies since 2005. Two hundred and thirty-four of those 636 are from the Dominican Republic. That’s 37 percent. Players from the Dominican Republic made up 10.4 percent (89 of 856) of Opening Day rosters in 2013. Of 38 positive tests involving major league players, 13 players (34 percent) hailed from the DR. This doesn’t mean all Dominican players use steroids. It means the steroid issue is significant in the DR. Some of you old-timers might remember a time when East German swimmers were more likely to test positive for banned substances than other swimmers. An exhaustive ESPN.com report from 2009 (headlined “Steroid problem reaches critical mass in the DR”) stated, “According to numbers provided by MLB, in 2004, the inaugural year of drug testing in the Dominican Summer League, 11 percent of teenage prospects signed by major league clubs tested positive.’’

I'm pretty sure the only relevant fact here is this - did David Ortiz use PED's this year? Big Papi himself reported a random drug test conducted on the same day (May 11th) of the original column. Unless Shank has some undisclosed inside information, I don't see the logic of this portion of the column, which is nothing more than a defense of the May 11th column. Since Ortiz has every motivation to shut Shank up, we'll have to wait until Big Papi's test results come out.